


Different Seasons

by SophiaHawkins



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: A world without Duncan MacLeod, AU, F/M, Very AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:33:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29816736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaHawkins/pseuds/SophiaHawkins
Summary: Being 5,000 years old never made falling in love any easier. A look at four old and and four new Immortals' lives from different periods in the 20th century.
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I started this story many years ago (so please excuse any writing that might suck), sadly never got it finished, hope that one day I can get back to work on it and finally see it through. 
> 
> 2\. The problem with only having a two-parter to show us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the characters were never given a chance to be fleshed out. And just like it stands to reason Methos wasn't good for the whole 5,000 years he was alive, as explained in the behind the scenes on the DVD, it also stood to reason his three brothers weren't pure evil for the same time period. I wanted to do an alternate history set before the series' timeline that explored what it would be like if all four of the Horsemen were married to Immortal woman in the 20th century, and what they would be like, and have it take place in a universe where the Horsemen weren't hellbent on world domination. Some very weird stuff ahead, hope you enjoy, please read and review!

Different Seasons

1975

The summer of love had come and gone a long time ago. For some people it had been a lifetime ago. For Billie Boyd, it was a time she hadn't been old enough to appreciate. She was a self claimed 'above average' college freshman. She was a quiet woman who had been an outcast most of her life. She stood very tall and very thin, with a head of long blonde hair and a pale face which she normally hid behind large round, wire rimmed sunglasses. Ordinarily she was a lone wolf in everything she did, but that had changed since she finished high school.

Her first instinct had not been to go to college. No, she had run away to join the circus, but she had quickly found that was not the thrill it was cracked up to be. So she had returned to her hometown and instead spent many of her days hanging around with the hippies and other assorted deadheads. The infamous Summer of Love may have been gone, but the dream of going cross country, tearing up the road on a Harley had not. Unfortunately that had its downside as well. This, she had discovered one night when sleeping out in the open. She and her friends had been jumped by a bunch of hicks who hit them with chains and tried to shoot them. They escaped, their clothes torn and whole parts of hair ripped out of their heads but they were still alive.

Billie had considered trying one more extravagant adventure, but she figured she should quit while she was still alive. So she decided to try and settle down into a nice, peaceful, boring life and that was when she started attending the university. Shortly after enrollment, she had met another student, a man who she guessed to be in his early 20s. At first the two didn't interact with one another at all. But one night they accidentally bumped into each other at a movie and they'd seen quite a bit of each other ever since.

Adam. His name was Adam. Adam Barnes, a 20-something guy who also stuck out like a sore thumb for being tall and lanky and pale, and a student. Anybody who didn't know what Adam did with his days could guess he was a student, and the same could be said for Billie. Unfortunately that was not something she wanted to be known for at first glance, but it seemed she was stuck with it until something more appealing caught her interest. So she hung on at the college and kept going, and within time found out that she and Adam had quite a bit in common.

At the beginning of the semester, she had moved into the girls' dorm, but she had been thrown out of it for helping one of the local fraternities break into the women's rooms for a panty raid. Her actions were deemed worthy of eviction from the dorm but not expulsion from the college itself; and she noted duly if not bitterly, that the same actions committed on the part of the fraternity boys had not been deemed worthy of any kind of discipline.

Billie moved back to her home and considered it a large advantage because the whole house was her property and she didn't have to bother with any roommates cutting into her own space. And it made for much easier late night visits with Adam. On one Saturday in particular he came over to her house to pay a visit. Nobody answered the door so he helped himself in and called out for her.

"I'm in the kitchen," he heard her respond.

Adam followed the voice from the front hall through the dining room and into the large kitchen and found her at the table, sticking a large metal spoon into a jar of strawberry jam.

"What're you doing?" he asked.

"You said that we were going to a movie tonight, right?" Billie asked.

"Yes."

"At the drive in, right?"

"That's correct."

"And it's that one where the big red blob comes down to earth and starts eating people, right?" Billie asked.

"Yes, so?" Adam asked.

"One more thing, your car _is_ a convertible, right?" she asked.

"Yes," he was about laughing now, "Why?"

"Oh it's going to be very warm tonight and I imagine most of the other people will be coming with their tops down too," Billie said, "And if they do, I'm going to have a surprise for them."

"I have no doubt," the man replied with a knowing smirk on his face.

Billie's eyes sparkled behind her glasses. "Why are you staring at me?" she asked him.

"No reason," he smugly answered.

* * *

That night the two of them pulled into the drive-in theater for the sci-fi creature double feature. Looking around, they saw that Billie's prediction was right; the warm spring air had most of the other people putting down the tops of their cars. Adam looked at Billie and could tell she was estimating how much throwing distance she would have to cover when the time was right.

"Keep these things up and you won't make it to graduation," he told her, "They're going to throw you out of that college someday for sure."

"I wish they would," Billie said, "Being kicked out is a lot more honorable than dropping out."

"Well if you're looking to get _thrown_ out," Adam told her, "Just ride your motorcycle into the building, that did it for McQueen."

"Yeah…" they spent most of the movie just casually glancing at the screen while they talked. As it neared the film's climax, Billie looked and saw that several of the people along near their car were deeply engrossed in the movie. So much so, that none of them noticed her taking out the jar of strawberry jam she'd cut up earlier that day, unscrewing the lid and throwing the contents out of the jar, and onto the occupants of the next car.

The man and woman in the next car jumped up and started screaming and trying to get whatever had landed on them off of them and they wound up throwing some of it into the open convertible beside them and in front of them. Pretty soon the whole drive-in was full of hysterical people screaming and frantically trying to throw off the strawberry jam that they mistook for flesh eating creatures from outer space.

Adam and Billie were rolling around in the seats of his car, watching the mass hysteria and laughing at it all.

"You are horrible!" Adam told her.

"I know!" she barely got out over her laughing.

* * *

Neither of them went to class the next Monday. It was a warm, sunny day, the grass and the trees and the flowers were all alive again after a cold winter of misery, and they decided that being out in the fresh air was more important than anything the professors had in mind for them.

They had spread a large blanket out on the ground and laid on it, gazing up into the sunlight. As the day passed, the temperature got warmer and the two found themselves stripping off their outer layers of jackets and bell bottom jeans. Billie had surprised Adam by coming with her bathing suit on under her clothes, and she spread out to try and get some of the sun's rays into her borderline albino skin. Adam just removed his jacket and his shirt and rolled onto his side to enjoy the sun and the breeze.

"Adam," she said after about an hour.

He'd just about fallen asleep and responded with a drowsy, "Hmm?"

"Do you believe in God?" she asked him.

Adam turned over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head, "Sometimes. You?"

"I wonder," was Billie's response.

That surprised Adam. He sat up and looked over at her, "About what?"

"If God knew what He was doing, why did He give us each only one life? And why do they have to be so damn short?" she asked, "One life isn't long enough for us to figure out what all we want to do and what all we're good at. Do you ever think about that? This minute, this day, this year is soon to pass and there's no force on earth that can ever turn the clock back to this time."

Adam laid back down and said, not really answering her question, "The Bible tells of people who lived to be 900 years old."

"Well something sure screwed up the process along the way," Billie said, "Trees live for over 200 years, planets forever…why are we given only 60, 70, maybe 80 years to figure everything out? Aren't we of more individual worth than trees? And why is it…why is it that there's only one way to be born into this world, but there must be some five million ways to die? Do you ever think about that?" she asked.

"Quite a bit," Adam remarked.

* * *

They went to the movie theater the next night, to see the new hit film that had come out with The Who. It hadn't been out long but already it seemed to be all everybody was talking about.

"I don't get it," Billie said as they headed up to the balcony seats, "The guys can sing, but can they act? That's the question."

"We'll find out," Adam told her.

Sometime during the movie, Billie elbowed Adam and asked him, "Have you ever taken drugs?"

"A few," he answered, "You?"

"Once," she said, "No LSD though, but this movie looks like an acid trip if ever I saw one."

About halfway through the movie, Billie looked over and saw Adam was looking excruciatingly uneasy.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

He pointed at the screen and told her, "Those two relatives, the cousin and the uncle…they remind me of my brothers."

Billie did a double take when she heard that. She looked back at the screen and said to Adam, "I didn't know you had any brothers."

"Three of them," he told her, "And we're not on good terms with one another these days."

"How bad is it?" she asked.

"Well, to be honest, I haven't spoken with any of them for…quite some time now."

"That bad, huh…well where are they?" Billie asked.

Adam shook his head and replied, "It's been so long, I'm not even sure anymore."

After the movie had let out and everybody headed for home, Billie kept pestering Adam the entire drive back to her house.

"So what started this feud between you and your brothers?" she asked him.

"It's not a feud really, we just don't get along very well, and we go long periods of time without seeing one another," he answered.

"Well how long has it been going on this time?" Billie asked.

"Too damn long," Adam answered.

A minute passed before Billie asked him, "What are they like?"

"I told you."

"No you didn't, you said you have three brothers, so if one's like the cousin in that movie and the other's like the uncle, what's the third one like?"

Adam thought about how to answer that for about a minute before finally responding, "Mr. Magoo."

* * *

Whoever said you can't escape your past sure knew what he was talking about. It didn't seem to matter where Billie went or what she did, there was always somebody hassling her due to her past spent with the hippies, and she was considered one herself by association and due to how she looked. And she quickly found out the worst incidents to be on the receiving end of it was when the cops were on the other. Almost every day when she walked either to or from the college, there was always some officer coincidentally turning the corner she was approaching. And despite being in public and having several potential eyewitnesses, nothing deterred the men in blue from harassing her.

She could live with the insults easily enough, she'd had to get used to that her whole life. Her problem was that the cops never stopped at just verbal harassment; she always managed to squirm away at the right second before they could grab her but they came closer every time. There was one in particular, a motorcycle cop who for some odd reason was always patrolling the area wherever she happened to be going. After the first few times she had told Adam about it and he had offered to walk with her to and from the college as a form of protection. Her response to that was just to laugh.

"You'll protect me," she said mockingly, "That's all good and well but who is going to protect _you_?"

He hadn't taken kindly to that remark but all the same the next morning he stuck by her side like they were conjoined twins. Nothing happened on the way _to_ school but on the way back they encountered the same motorcycle cop, who met them with his club out and ready to use. Adam stuck his head out enough to read the name tag on the officer's shirt that read: Peterson. The two men exchanged a few words and Adam, this not being one of his smarter moments, told the cop what he could do with his nightstick; instead he just proceeded to beat Adam with it a couple of times before advising him not to show his face around there again.

Billie had wanted nothing more than to steal the gun out of the cop's holster and plug him with all six bullets but instead she grabbed Adam and got him out of there as fast as she could. Once they were a couple of blocks away they stopped and she inquired as to how bad the damage was. He insisted that it was nothing but she grabbed his shirt and lifted it up and was surprised to see that there weren't any marks on him.

"I don't get it," she said, "I saw him hit you."

"I bruise slowly," Adam insisted, "By the time they show up I don't even remember how I got them."

The only thing Billie could think to say in response was, "He's a bastard, the whole lot of them are."

"I know," Adam said.

"I've got half a mind to drop out of college and get the hell out of this place as fast as possible," she said.

"Why don't you?" he asked her as they resumed walking, "You can transfer your credits to another university can't you?"

"I think so," she said, "There's got to be some place we can go without having to put up with these idiots."

That's what she thought anyway. A couple of days later the two students were on their way to an afternoon movie when they got stopped by Officer Peterson again. The vicinity they were in was for some reason very scarcely populated today, so there was no one around to see Peterson pull the gun out of his holster and hold it on them, while keeping it low so as not to draw any extra attention to himself, and he ordered the two to start walking ahead, and he would tell them when to stop.

Neither was able to think of way to retaliate without getting shot, so they did as they were told. They walked for three blocks until they came to the top of the hill that overlooked the city dump. Both had their hands up over their heads and it was starting to hit them why they'd been led out here, but it was too late. Billie was shot first, in the back of the head, and she dropped off the edge and hit a pile of junk below. Before Adam had time to do anything, he felt his back and chest being ripped open by a through and through wound as he too had been shot, and the second blast put him over the edge too, and he fell to his death in a pile of garbled metal.

* * *

Billie awoke some time later, her eyesight was blurred and everything was spinning, and her head was killing her. She slowly realized where she was and started to pull herself up and off the assorted metal parts she had fallen on.

"Adam?" she weakly called out as she tried to find him.

She turned and saw him just getting up from where he'd landed about ten feet over.

"What happened?" she asked as she got up, "I thought that pig shot us."

"He did," Adam told her, his voice slightly shaking, the mere sight of him said he was about to boil over in uncontrollable anger.

Billie ran her hands over the back of her head and didn't see any blood. And she looked at the hole in his shirt and saw he wasn't bleeding either.

"Adam, what's going on?" she asked, "Why aren't we dead?"

He helped her out of the garbage and got them both out of the dump and to the nearest church so they'd be out of sight and in a safe place to talk.

"We're what?" she asked when he finished explaining it.

Adam opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, and tried again as he told her, "We are Immortals. We can't die, not unless somebody cuts off our heads."

"You've got to be joking," she said.

"I wish I were," he replied, "But I'm not…I've had too many years of experience to know better than that."

"How…" it hit her what he was saying, "How old are you?"

"A lot older than you think," was all he was willing to say for now.

"So now what happens?" she asked.

"The only one who saw us die is Peterson, we might be safe sticking around here but like you said why take a chance?"

He had unknowingly started the gears turning in Billie's head.

"You said that we can't die?" she said.

"That's right."

She looked at Adam and suddenly had a big grin on her face, "Do you think Peterson believes in ghosts?"

Adam shook his head, "This is no joke, Billie, he knows we're supposed to be dead, you don't want any of his partners finding out about this."

"Who's going to tell them?" she asked, "You know what they say, dead men tell no tales."

And now it was Adam's turn to have things explained to him.

* * *

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked in a last ditch effort to try and talk Billie out of her plan.

"You got shot too, you don't want to make this son of a bitch pay?" she asked.

"If you're going to live for a long time you have to learn to get used to it, we all do," Adam told her.

"Yeah well assuming I _do_ live a long time, I'll get used to it later, but right now, it's payback time and payback is a bitch."

"So there's nothing I can say that'll make you change your mind?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"You realize what you're going to do, don't you?" he asked.

"I'm going to kill the bastard…if what you say is true that's another thing I'll have to get used to, killing people, why not start now and even the score?"

"Next time it won't be so easy," Adam assured her.

"I'll worry about that then," she said, "Let's go."

It was easy to find out where Peterson would be working that night and they knew that he did not work with partners, so he would be alone, it was perfect. It was dark by now and nobody would see them, but up ahead they were able to see the light from Peterson's motorcycle and knew that soon he would be close enough to see them. Billie reached into her coat and took out the shotgun she had loaded for the occasion and she prepared to take aim. The headlight on the motorcycle hit them and momentarily blinded them, and whether Peterson recognized the two people he had killed, or he was just aware he was about to run down two pedestrians, they didn't know; either way he started to swerve and tried to brake but he was just about to fall over, bike and all, and slide on the asphalt. But Billie never gave him the chance, she aimed the gun so the shot would just hit the gas tank and she pulled the trigger, and watched in mild shock and then sadistic amusement as the flames from the explosion climbed high in the night air. By morning whatever was left of the body would be beyond all known recognition and so would his bike, and Billie sealed their fate in making it impossible to link them to this travesty in any way, by chucking the shotgun into the fire, so that when the flames finally died out, it too would be impossible to identify or link back to its owner.

"Now we'll leave," she told Adam.

He stood there for a moment frozen in awe at how flawlessly it had been pulled off. And all he could do was shake his head in astonishment and comment, "You're a quick learner."

"Yeah, too bad my teachers never saw it," Billie replied, "And now they never will."


	2. Chapter 2

1952

Roberta Nash scanned the darkened area closely, she knew that she had heard somebody. The street was almost pitch black but as she quietly marched forward with her rifle in one hand and with the other pulled the brim of her cap down lower; turning the corner she saw the silhouette of a man with his back to her. The man seemed to be looking around for something or somebody. The 23-year-old woman quietly crept up behind the man and without warning, stuck the barrel of the rifle into the middle of his back and told him, "Stick 'em up!"

The man let out a small yelp of surprise and threw his hands over his head. Then he recognized the voice and turned around. Roberta saw that it was Graham Korda, a man she knew very well, namely because he was her current boyfriend.

"What're you doing here?" she asked.

"Being grateful that's not a bayonet," he answered.

She rested the gun at her side and said, "They send all the young, able bodied men off to Korea, and then they wonder what we do when the crime rates hit zenith, and we're stuck with the," she looked Graham up and down and added, "Rotten leftovers."

"Very funny," he dryly remarked, "And exactly how long do you plan to stay out here playing Ma Kettle?"

"Watch it," she said as she jabbed him in the stomach with the gun again. He grunted and doubled over momentarily.

As Roberta had pointed out, when the war in Korea broke out the draft went into effect again and pulled many young men from their home lives and jobs and this included men in law enforcement as well as the local night watchmen who made sure nobody broke into any of the buildings in the business district. So Roberta had taken it upon herself to make sure that things remained quiet and peaceful now until the men came home. She'd been doing the nightly rounds as substitute night guard for a couple of months but the time in which she had been acquainted with Graham went further back than that. They had met six months ago one night when they had crossed paths during a tunnel run.

Roberta was born with a wild streak and she had never been content to settle down into a proper woman's role. She just barely finished school, after which she ran away from home and she had been making her living off of wages placed on drag races, of which she was a constant competitor and very seldom the loser in any of them. That night she had been speeding through a tunnel with her lights off, supposed to be driving at another racer who was also in the dark, at a speed of about 60 miles an hour. The only catch was that Roberta always looked for ways to bend the rules, and at the last possible second, to ensure that she won, she hit her headlights and blinded the other driver, always causing them to swerve right into the wall of the tunnel. That was what had happened to Graham, only he hadn't been racing; he'd only had the misfortune of crossing through the same tunnel that she thought she was playing chicken with someone else in.

As predicted, his car had slammed into the wall, and when he got out of the mess, Roberta thought that she might have done some serious damage to him because it looked like he'd gotten a long cut running down his face. But as it turned out it was an old scar that he'd already had for many years, though he refused to tell her where he got it from. That had been how the two had met; and for some bizarre reason they had decided to see more of each other following the incident as well. In that time she had found out that he was about 30, he lived alone and his only family consisted of three brothers that he had lost touch with over the years. In time they were both surprised to learn how well they could get along with one another and from there; though neither knew how, it was only a few small steps from being able to tolerate one another to being in love. Roberta refused to settle down and so shunned any ideas of marriage, which she was relieved to learn suited Graham just as well, complaining that he'd already been married and found it the most dangerous and difficult puzzle to get out of, and Roberta agreed.

"Murder is messy, divorce is messier," she said once, "Might as well just stay married for all the trouble it causes."

"I think that's what I like about you," he told her, "We think alike."

"What a revolting concept," she replied.

On this night, business as a night watchman was slow as usual, and it was decided that Roberta could take enough time away from her post for a game of cards around the corner. The city shut down for the night every night and with everybody gone and all lights out save for the lamp posts, it became rather claustrophobic noting how empty the large concrete jungle was; not a soul around and nobody to help if anything should go wrong.

Roberta and Graham perched themselves on the sidewalk under one of the brighter street lights so they could see their cards.

"So tell it to me again why when they sent out the draft cards they passed you up?" Roberta asked.

"You know perfectly well why, I told you already," he responded.

"It figures, they take all the nice fresh young guys and leave us women with the likes of you," she said, "That's like trying to make stew out of the horse that's going for glue."

"Shut up," he told her, knowing she was only trying to throw him off by talking, "What've you got?"

"You first," she said.

He put his cards down and showed four kings. Roberta whistled and said, "That's good, that's _very_ good, but I'm better." And to show, she put down her cards and revealed four aces, and she held her hand out to him and said only, "Gimme."

Graham grumbled something under his breath as he got up and started to undo his jacket. He made the mistake of doing it with his back to Roberta and she took that opportunity to jump him from behind, and with the hand being quicker than the eye, she had managed to handcuff his arms behind his back.

"Alright," he said, clearly not amused, "What's the game this time?"

"Just a little practice," she replied as she patted him down, "It's been a while since I've had to do this, and if I catch anybody around here, I'm going to be ready for them."

"Very funny," he dryly told her.

"Graham," Roberta said, "Can you get out of those?"

"What do you think?!" he asked.

"Answer the question," she said.

"No, why?"

She laughed maniacally and replied, "Perfect."

He felt her hands reach around his waist to the buckle on his belt, but they were interrupted when a light shone on them from behind, and they knew they had company.

"What's going on here?"

Roberta turned around and saw it was O'Reilly, one of the older cops whose beat ended six blocks away from here.

"Nash, that you?" he asked as he tried to identify the woman with a gun.

"Yeah it's me," she replied.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Roberta turned around and hit Graham in the back and said, "I caught this guy trying to break into the pawnshop, but I checked, he's got nothing and I think he's just a bit tight. So I'm going to personally escort him home and let him sober up."

O'Reilly shone his light in Graham's face and gave him the once over before deciding that Roberta could be on her way with him. Roberta kicked Graham in the back and told him to start walking, and he did, and once they turned the corner and were out of O'Reilly's sight, they both stopped and Graham barked at Roberta to get him out of the handcuffs.

"Somehow I get the feeling this isn't your first time," she said as she took the keys out of her pocket.

"And could the same be said for you?" he asked as the cuffs opened and he shook his wrist to get the circulation going again.

"I fail to see what that has to do with anything," she replied.

"You wouldn't if you were in this position," he assured her.

"Eh, shut up," she said as she kicked him again. Graham spun around and glared at her as he said, "You do that one more time and you'll be sorry."

"I already am, I met you didn't I?" she returned.

They kept at each other's necks for days or weeks on end, and through it all they never got anywhere and only seemed to go around in circles to revive the same old arguments the next time they started fighting again. But in between they found they were able to get along with one another; they'd quickly found out that they were very much alike, they liked speed, they liked to cheat death, they both enjoyed a good strong drink and many of them, and neither had any problem fighting anybody and both had had their shares in life of kicking and punching and clawing their ways out of one fine mess or another, sometimes just barely with their lives intact.

Through it all, Roberta never gave up racing, anybody that was up for the chase she would take on and gladly put her money where her mouth was. She could drive practically anything and she won almost every time; so it was only natural that sooner or later she would make an enemy who was sore enough at losing that they'd want to kill her.

Naturally these kinds of things were never found out until it was too late; and it was no exception here when she and Graham got in her convertible coupe one night and drove off. Somehow or other, Roberta had been talked into letting Graham drive her car; whether that would have any impact on the events of that night were never determined. Leaving the town limits, Graham pressed down harder on the accelerator and soon they were going at 50 miles an hour; no big deal, until they came to a turn and he stepped on the brake and nothing happened. He tried again, this time stomping on the brake with both feet and still nothing worked; by now they were going even faster, so he tried grabbing the emergency brake but that proved futile as well. The needle on the speedometer went higher and they went faster and both knew that it was inevitable unless something happened, they were going to crash.

And that's exactly what happened. Graham tried swerving out of the way but the car wound up jumping the curb and smashing against a lamp post. The bodies were half thrown out of the car and finally fell out over the side when their dangling weight became too great.

* * *

When Roberta came to, the first thing that she realized was that her teeth were killing her and the pain went from her mouth all the way up to her forehead, and remembering the crash she was amazed that she hadn't been cut into tiny pieces. She opened her eyes and pulled herself up and saw both she and Graham had landed in the middle of the street.

"Graham," she said as she put a hand on her aching head, "Can you get up?"

"I can do better than that," he replied.

Roberta looked back at the car which had just exploded in flames and she realized what a narrow escape they'd had, and how just a couple inches more would've put them directly in the line of fire.

"What happened?" she asked.

She felt him grab her and pull her up as he explained, "Somebody wanted you dead and tampered with the car."

"They came pretty close," she said.

"They didn't come close, they succeeded," he told her.

Roberta laughed, "Oh come on, Graham."

He wasn't laughing however. "If you don't believe me, explain how you got out of that crash without a single cut on you?" He watched the puzzled expression on her face as she looked at her arms and checked her clothes for any blood stains. "Yeah, doesn't make much sense, does it?" he asked.

Roberta didn't know what to make of it. "We couldn't have been thrown out of the car before the crash…so what happened?"

"You aren't going to like it," he told her with a shake of his head, "But that doesn't matter now."

* * *

"This is really happening, isn't it?" Roberta asked as she laid down on the brick sidewalk and ran her hands over the sides of her head.

"It is," Graham told her, "Whether for better or worse, I'm not necessarily sure. But it's real, we're real, this is real, you're Immortal and you're going to live forever."

"How is this possible?" Roberta asked as she sat up.

"Nobody knows," he said, "I've been struggling with it for over 4,000 years and I haven't found out either."

"4,000 years?" Roberta groaned, rolled her eyes back in her head and hit the ground again. "So what now? Where do we go from here?"

"It's your life, and at this point there are very few restrictions in your way," he told her, "You just need to remember, keep your head, and don't try to kill another Immortal on holy ground."

"How come?" Roberta looked at him.

Graham shrugged and said, "Nobody knows, just like nobody knows what the prize is supposed to be, but it's been that way since before any of us were born."

"What's it supposed to be, like if you'd kill somebody on holy ground you'd be damned or something?" Roberta asked.

"Could be," Graham replied as he laid back against the pavement as well, as though he were trying to stretch out and get a tan by the light of the street lamp.

"But you don't believe that," she said.

"I don't," he agreed, "I think it was just somebody's idea of there being one place in the world our kind could be considered safe. Everywhere else, we're a moving target."

"That's comforting," she dryly responded. Then something occurred to her, "Nobody saw the crash, nobody knows I'm supposed to be dead, right?"

"Right," Graham agreed hesitantly, "But whoever tampered with your car is going to find it very odd that you were able to just walk away from a crash like that," he pointed to the fiery mess, "Without a mark on you. So if you want to stick around you better find some way to make it look like you were knocked around in the wreck, and that won't be easy because you don't bruise anymore, at least not long term anyway."

Roberta looked at him and said, "And you?"

He shook his head, "I'm no teacher, every student I've ever taken is dead, I've given up on it by now." He seemed to think about it for a minute before adding, "But, let it never be said I never helped one of our own kind in the beginning. A fresh kill is never a good one worth having anyway."

"That's a relief," Roberta dryly remarked.

* * *

Roberta had tried to put out of her mind how much things had changed in just a few hours and tried to return to her old life. She tried to ignore the headaches she got whenever Graham came around but it didn't work. And now that she couldn't die she found herself constantly thinking about death, including her own.

Every night she resumed her post as the night watchman for the neighborhood and for a long time things remained calm; but one night as Graham had just shown up to shoot the evening breeze with her, she'd caught a man trying to break into one of the shops and a chase had ensued. On this night, Roberta had traded her rifle for a .38 caliber pistol and she had it drawn and her finger at the trigger and just ready to pull it. She ran off into the night after the man and chased him halfway through the neighborhood; the street lamps cast enough light down so she could see him climbing up the fire escape of an old hotel, she had just landed on the first few steps when she aimed the pistol and fired a shot at the second floor spot where he was. The man fell back but he didn't fall down the stairs, and after only a second to recover, he resumed climbing. Roberta chased up the stairs after him and Graham was following right behind her, and he was also armed but she didn't know it. They had an equal amount of distance between them, when he reached the bottom stairs, she was up to the second floor and ready to shoot again.

But this time the shot that fired wasn't Roberta's, and instead she had been hit. Graham had two guns drawn and with one fired in response in the direction the first bullet had come from. Roberta shook off the momentary shock of being shot and continued climbing the stairs after the first man. Her chase took her straight up to the roof of the hotel and she found herself looking around and finding nobody. Just when she was starting to wonder if she'd lost her mind, she heard a noise from behind and turned just in time to see the man coming at her with a large axe in his hands. Probably, she guessed and found it odd she could even think at a time like that, the one the hotel kept in case of a fire or another emergency where they had to break down one of the doors. She moved just in time to avoid being cut in half and found herself reaching her hands out and also grabbed the long handle of the axe. She and the man stood evenly pitted against one another and wrestled for the weapon but Roberta took caution to remember that the sharp end of the blade was pointed against her favor.

Neither gained much leeway during the fight but it occurred to Roberta they had moved closer to the edge of the roof and it gave her an idea. Using all of her strength she managed to completely flip the axe, and the man with it, causing him to fall back and over the edge and the shocked look on his face as he fell was the last she saw of him, and a few seconds later she heard the SPLAT. Roberta went back to the fire escape and started down when she saw Graham two floors down and saw he'd had his own hands full; half in and out of a window down there was another man who was now dead, exactly what had happened to him she didn't know but looking at Graham she could guess just what the cause of death had been.

"You'd better get your prints off that axe," he advised her.

"Think it's going to matter?" Roberta asked.

"It could," he said, "You're not going to die, and you're not going to get any older, you won't look any older either so you don't want a life sentence in prison, trust me."

* * *

As it turned out the next day when the cops found the bodies, the two men were wanted in other states on charges of murder and armed robbery, so few questions were asked about how these two met their untimely demises. Roberta had been cleared, but decided she couldn't do it anymore, not here, she could feel the walls of the city closing in on her and she decided it was in her best interest to get out of there as fast as possible and go somewhere else where nobody knew her and she didn't know the town. Graham had agreed to go with her, but they'd quickly found out that changing locations hadn't done them too many favors. Everywhere they went they found themselves encountering more of the same kind of people and that resulted in more than one rooftop confrontation. One time Roberta found herself being the one thrown over the ledge and as she spiraled down to the street she was in awe of how slowly everything seemed to pass to her and what a hell of a view it was on the way down.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, anywhere and everywhere Roberta went she was still getting into fights with people, most of them she never knew who they were or why they hated her, and she still raced against anybody who foolishly believed they could beat her; and she also still had people coming after her who wanted to kill her, and she found it slightly amusing that of them all, none of them were Immortals. Always mortals, always somebody who shot at her, or tried to stab her, or tried to cut her with a broken beer bottle; and some of them got creative and tried to drown her in the ocean after tying her up, and once she was jumped by four men who hauled her off to an abandoned car garage where they tied her up, put her in the car, locked the windows and siphoned cyanide gas into it through the exhaust pipe. Since she knew she couldn't die, she didn't give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing her panic and futilely struggle for her life. But upon returning to life she had made up her mind that a Nazi and _only_ a Nazi would _ever_ endorse the gas chamber to kill anybody. She had nothing against the death penalty but she personally advocated for firing squads and the electric chair.

Roberta never forgot the faces of the bastards who tried to kill her or who temporarily succeeded in actually killing her; and she found the beauty of being Immortal was she had every chance to even the score. In life, Immortal life especially, revenge wasn't just a virtue, it was a given, a must, it gave her life an added purpose, and she strived to fulfill that purpose. She'd quickly found out that in her new life, few things were off limit to her, she had the money and the ability to get her hands on almost anything, and a large supply of weapons of choice were at the top of that list. She had an extensive collection of guns ranging from pistols and revolvers to sub machine guns, and they all got regular work; for a brief period Roberta had considered the possibility of making her living as a professional assassin. She'd certainly be able to get plenty of practice at it in the years to come if this kept up.

It seemed that Roberta was cursed to have trouble follow her around for the rest of her unnatural life, and maybe it was drawn to her because of her choice of lifestyle; but she refused to settle down and start leading a normal boring life. If she had to be hounded by the scum of the earth for the rest of her days because she was what she was, then so be it. After all it was her life and she was going to live forever, so she could do with it whatever the hell she pleased. And she did, and always with Graham right alongside her. 4,000 years had done a lot to him, but surprisingly he seemed to adapt very well to this current, barbaric, murderously violent, this Atomic Age.


End file.
